Born on February 16

1032

Emperor Yingzong of Song
the fifth emperor of the Song Dynasty of China.
His personal name was originally Zhao Zongshi but he later changed it to Zhao Shu. He reigned from 1063 to 1067. His temple name means "Outstandingly Talented Ancestor"

1084

Siegfried I (archbishop of Mainz)
the Abbot of Fulda from 25 December 1058 until 6 January 1060, and from January 1060 until his death in February 1084, he was Archbishop of Mainz.

1270

Otto von Lutterberg
the Ordensmeister of the Livonian Order of the Teutonic Knights from 1266 to 1270, and was in command of the Livonian Order in 1268 when the Knights were heavily defeated by a Russian army at the Battle of Rakvere.

1304

Jayaatu Khan Emperor Wenzong of Yuan
regarded as the 12th Great Khan of the Mongols in Mongolia.

1331

Coluccio Salutati
a Tuscan humanist and man of letters, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence; as chancellor of the Republic and its most prominent voice, he was effectively the permanent secretary of state in the generation before the rise of the Medici.

1419

John I Duke of Cleves
Duke of Cleves and Count of Mark.

1497

Philipp Melanchthon
a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems.
He stands next to Luther and Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and molder of Protestantism. Along with Luther, he is the primary founder of Lutheranism. They both denounced what they believed was the exaggerated cult of the saints, asserted justification by faith, and denounced the coercion of the conscience in the sacrament of penance by the Catholic Church, that they believed could not offer certainty of salvation. In unison they rejected transubstantiation, the belief that the bread from the Lord's Supper becomes Christ's body when consumed. Melanchthon made the distinction between law and gospel the central formula for Lutheran evangelical insight. By the "law", he meant God's requirements both in Old and New Testament; the "gospel" meant the free gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ

1514

Georg Joachim Rheticus
a mathematician, cartographer, navigational-instrument maker, medical practitioner, and teacher.
He is perhaps best known for his trigonometric tables and as Nicolaus Copernicus's sole pupil. He facilitated the publication of his master's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

1519

Gaspard II de Coligny
a French nobleman and admiral, best remembered as a disciplined Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion.

1543

Kanō Eitoku
a Japanese painter who lived during the Azuchi–Momoyama period of Japanese history and one of the most prominent patriarchs of the Kanō school of Japanese painting.

1592

Matsudaira Tadateru
a daimyo during the Edo period of Japan.
He was the sixth son of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was born in Edo Castle during the year of the dragon , and as a child his name was Tatsuchiyo. His mother was Lady Chaa , a concubine of Ieyasu. Ieyasu sent the boy to live with a vassal, Minagawa Hiroteru, daimyo of the Minagawa Domain in Shimotsuke Province

1602

Eleonore Dorothea of Anhalt-Dessau
a princess of Anhalt-Dessau by birth and by marriage Duchess of Saxe-Weimar.

1620

Frederick William Elector of Brandenburg
Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia – and thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia – from 1640 until his death.
A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he is popularly known as "the Great Elector" because of his military and political prowess. Frederick William was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, associated with the rising commercial class. He saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. His shrewd domestic reforms gave Prussia a strong position in the post-Westphalian political order of north-central Europe, setting Prussia up for elevation from duchy to kingdom, achieved under his son and successor

1679

Friedrich Wilhelm Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
a duke of Saxe-Meiningen.

1684

Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský
a Czech composer, organist and teacher of the baroque era.
He wrote among other works motets, other choral works and organ solo works

1692

Giovanni Domenico Mansi
an Italian prelate, theologian, scholar and historian, known for his massive works on the Church councils.

1698

Pierre Bouguer
a French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomer.
He is also known as "the father of naval architecture"

Marcello Bacciarelli
a Polish-Italian painter of the late-baroque and Neoclassic periods.

1746

Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse
born at Langewiesen in Schwarzburg-Sondershausen.

1755

Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow
a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars.

1761

Jean-Charles Pichegru
a distinguished French general of the Revolutionary Wars.
Under his command, French troops overran Belgium and the Netherlands before fighting on the Rhine front. His subsequent involvement in a royalist conspiracy to remove Napoleon from power led to his arrest and death

1769

Jean-Louis-Brigitte Espagne
a French cavalry commander of the French Revolutionary Wars, who rose to the top military rank of General of Division and took part to the Napoleonic Wars.

1772

Friedrich Gilly
a German architect and the son of the architect David Gilly.

1774

Pierre Rode
a French violinist and composer.

1778

John Colborne 1st Baron Seaton
a British Army officer and Colonial Governor.
After taking part as a junior officer in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition to Egypt and then the War of the Third Coalition, he served as military secretary to Sir John Moore at the Battle of Corunna. He then commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 66th Regiment of Foot and, later, the 52nd Regiment of Foot at many of the battles of the Peninsular War. At the Battle of Waterloo, Colborne on his own initiative brought the 52nd Regiment of Foot forward, took up a flanking position in relation to the French Imperial Guard and then, after firing repeated volleys into their flank, charged at the Guard so driving them back in disorder. He went on to become commander-in-chief of all the armed forces in British North America, personally leading the offensive at the Battle of Saint-Eustache in Lower Canada and defeating the rebel force in December 1837. After that he was high commissioner of the Ionian Islands and then Commander-in-Chief, Ireland

1786

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1786–1859)
the third daughter of Paul I of Russia and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg.
She was the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach by her marriage to Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

1787

Christian Ferdinand Friedrich Hochstetter
a German botanist and Protestant minister born in Stuttgart.
He was the father of geologist Ferdinand Hochstetter

1787

Andreas Schelfhout
a Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer, known for his landscape paintings.

1787

Jean-Antoine Petipa
a French ballet dancer and the father of Marius Petipa.

1788

Juan Van Halen
a Spanish military officer.
After fighting for the losing side in the Peninsular War, he was forced to flee to Spain. Van Halen became a military adventurer throughout Europe and went on an 18-month tenure as a colonel in the Russian Caucasus Dragoon Regiment until his removal by Tsar Alexander I of Russia

1790

Chrétien Urhan
a French violinist, organist, composer and player of the viola and the viola d'amore.

1792

Gregory Yakhimovich
the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and also a leading figure in the Ukrainian National Revival, from 1860 until his death in 1863.

1799

Heinrich von Kittlitz
a German artist, naval officer, explorer and naturalist.
He was a descendant of a family of old Prussian nobility

1799

François Dauverné
a French trumpeter who in 1827 was the first to use the new F three valved trumpet in public performance.
Dauverné was amongst the first to realise the potential of the newly invented valve trumpet after its arrival in Paris from Berlin and is credited with persuading several composers to write for it including Berlioz and Rossini

Phineas Quimby
an American spiritual teacher.
Quimby was a philosopher, magnetizer, mesmerist, healer, and inventor, who resided in Belfast, Maine, and had an office in Portland, Maine. Quimby's work is widely recognized as leading to the New Thought movement

1802

Gustave de Beaumont
a French magistrate, prison reformer, and travel companion to the famed philosopher and politician Alexis de Tocqueville.
While he was very successful in his lifetime, he is often overlooked and his name is synonymous with Tocqueville's achievements

1803

Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès
a French politician who fought on the barricades during the revolution of July.

1804

Jules Janin
a French writer and critic.

1804

Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold
a German physiologist and zoologist.
He was responsible for the introduction of the taxa Arthropoda and Rhizopoda, and for defining the taxon Protozoa specifically for single-celled organisms

1808

Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche
a French art and literary critic.

1812

Henry Wilson
the 18th Vice President of the United States and a Senator from Massachusetts.
Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading Republican, and a strong opponent of slavery. He devoted his energies to the destruction of the "Slave Power" - the faction of slave owners and their political allies which anti-slavery Americans saw as dominating the country

1813

Semen Hulak-Artemovsky
a Ukrainian opera composer, singer , actor, and dramatist who lived and worked in Imperial Russia.

1813

Joseph R. Anderson
an American civil engineer, industrialist, and soldier.
During the American Civil War he served as a Confederate general, and his Tredegar Iron Company was a major source of munitions and ordnance for the Confederate States Army

1816

Kaspar Gottfried Schweizer
a Swiss astronomer who travelled to Moscow in 1845 to become Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the Survey Institute, and later director of the Moscow University Observatory.

1816

Woldemar Hau
a German Baltic portrait painter who worked in the Biedermeier style.